Christie,Agatha - Murder At Hazelmore.doc

by Murder At Hazelmoor aka The Sittaford Mystery (lit)

  that kind. But you could see that Major Burnaby was

  really awfully rattled by it. I think that actually he be-lieved

  in it more than anybody else. But I thought poor

  little Mr. Rycroft was going to have a heart attack or

  something, yet he must be used to that kind of thing

  because he does a lot of psychic research, and as for

  Ronnie, Ronnie Garfield you know--he looked as though

  he had seen a ghost--actually seen one. Even mother

  was awfully upet--more than I have ever seen her be-fore."

  Agatha Christie

  "It must have been most spooky," said Emily. "I wish

  I had been there to see."

  "It was rather horrid really. We all pretended that it

  was--just fun, you know, but it didn't seem like that.

  And then Major Burnaby suddenly made up his mind to

  go over to Exhampton and we all tried to stop him, and

  said he would be buried in a snowdrift, but he would

  go. And there we sat, after he had gone, all feeling dread-ful

  and worried. And then, last night--no, yesterday

  morning--we got the news."

  "You think it was Captain Trevelyan's spirit?" said

  Emily in an awed voice. "Or do you think it was clair-voyance

  or telepathy?"

  "Oh, I don't know. But I shall never, never laugh at

  these things again."

  The parlormaid entered with a folded piece of paper

  on a salver which she handed to Violet.

  The parlormaid withdrew and Violet unfolded the pa-per,

  glanced over it and handled it to Emily.

  "There you are," she said. "As a matter of fact you are

  just in time. This murder business has upset the servants.

  They think it's dangerous to live in this out of the way

  part. Mother lost her temper with them yesterday eve-ning

  and has sent them all packing. They are going after

  lunch. We are going to get two men instead--a house-parlorman

  and a kind of butler chauffeur. I think it will

  answer much better."

  "Servants are silly, aren't they?" said Emily.

  "It isn't even as if Captain Trevelyan had been killed

  in this house."

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  "What made ¥ uu think of coming to live here?" asked

  Emily, trying to make the question sound artless and

  girlishly natural.

  "Oh, we thmht it would be rather fun," said Violet.

  "Don't you ad it rather dull?"

  "Oh, no, I 10v th country."

  But her eyes avoid¢d Emily's. Just for a moment she

  looked suspici0a and afraid.

  She stirred m, "- in her chair and Emily rose rather

  'easily

  reluctantly to le¥ feet.

  "I must be g0ihg noW," she said. "Thank you so much,

  Miss Willett. I du hope your mother will be all right."

  "Oh, she's quite well really. It's only the servants--

  and all the worr ,,

  "Of course.'

  Adroitly, unpe mewed by the others, Emily managed

  to discard her gove on a small table. Violet Willett

  accompanied hee to the front door and they took leave

  of each other with a few pleasant remarks.

  The padormail wlo had opened the door to Emily

  had unlocked it, but as violet Willett closed it behind

  her retreating gtest [Z inily caught no sound of the key

  being turned. V/hen she reached the gate therefore, she

  retraced her stegs slo,vlY.

  Her visit had aore thaa confirmed the theories she

  held about Sittaf%d Iouse. There was something queer

  going on here. S he didn't think Violet Willett was directly

  implicate&-thtt is unless she was a very clever

  actress indeed. Bht there was something wrong, and that

  something must h%e a conraection with the tragedy. There

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  must be some link between the Willetts and Captain

  Trevelyan, and in that link there might lie the clue to

  the whole mystery.

  She came up to the front door, turned the handle very

  gently and passed across the threshold. The hall was

  deserted. Emily paused uncertain what to do next. She

  had her excuse--the gloves left thoughtfully behind in

  the drawing-room. She stood stock still listening. There

  was no sound anywhere except a very faint murmur of

  voices from upstairs. As quietly as possible Emily crept

  to the foot of the stairs and stood looking up. Then, very

  gingerly she ascended a step at a time. This was rather

  more risky. She could hardly pretend that her gloves

  had walked of their own accord to the first floor, but she

  had a burning desire to overhear something of the con-versation

  that was going on upstairs. Modern builders

  never made their doors fit well, in Emily's opinion. You

  could hear a murmur of voices down here. Therefbre, if

  you reached the door itself you would hear plainly the

  conversation that was going on inside the room. Another

  step--one more again .... Two women's voices--Violet

  and her mother without doubt.

  Suddenly there was a break in the conversation--a

  sound of footsteps. Emily retreated rapidly.

  When Violet Willett opened her mother's door and

  came down the stairs she was surprised to find her late

  guest standing in the hall peering about her in a lost dog

  kind of way.

  "My gloves," she explained. "I must have left them.

  I came back for them."

  "I expect they are in here," said Violet.

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  They went into the drawing-rooln and there, sure

  enough, on a little table near where Emily had been

  sitting lay the missing gloves.

  "Oh, thank you," said Emily. "It's so stttpid of me. I

  am always leaving things."

  "And you want gloves in this weather," said Violet.

  "It's so cold." Once again they parted at the hall door,

  and this time Emily heard the key being turned in the

  lock.

  She went down the drive with plenty to think about

  for, as that door on the upper landing had opened, she

  had heard distinctly one sentence spoken in an older

  woman's fretful and plaintive voice:

  "My God," the voice had wailed, "I can't bear it. Will

  tonight never come?"

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  9. Theories

  E M I L Y arrived back at the cottage to find her boy

  friend absent. He had, Mrs. Curtis explained, gone off

  with several other young gentlemen, but two telegrams

  had come for the young lady. Emily took them, opened

  them, and put them in the pocket of her sweater, Mrs.

  Curtis eyeing them hungrily the while.

  "Not bad news, I hope?" said Mrs. Curtis.

  "Oh, no," said Emily.

  "Always gives me a turn a telegram does," said Mrs.

  Curtis.

  "I know," said Emily. "Very disturbing."

  At the moment she felt disinclined for anything but

  solitude. She wanted to sort out and arrange her own

  ideas. She went up to her own room, and taking pencil

  and notepaper she set to work on a system of her own.

  After twenty minutes of this exercise she was interrupted
/>
  by Mr. Enderby.

  "Hullo, hullo, hullo, there you are. Fleet Street has

  been hard on your tracks all morning but they have just

  missed you everywhere. Anyway they have had it from

  me that you are not to be worried. As far as you're

  concerned, I am the big noise."

  He sat down on the chair, Emily was occupying the

  bed, and chuckled.

  "Envy and malice isn't in it!" he said. "I have been

  handing them out the goods. I know everyone and I am

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  Murder at Hazelmoor

  right in it. It's too good to be true. I keep pinching myself

  and feeling I will wake up in a minute. I say, have you

  noticed the fog?"

  "It won't stop me going to Exeter this afternoon, will

  it?" said Emily.

  "Do you want to go to Exeter?"

  "Yes. I have to meet Mr. Dacres there. My solicitor,

  you know--the one who is undertaking Jim's defence.

  He wants to see me. And I think I shall pay a visit to

  Jim's Aunt Jennifer, while I am there. After all, Exeter

  is only half an hour away."

  "Meaning she might have nipped over by train and

  batted her brother over the head and nobody would have

  noticed her absence."

  "Oh, I know it sounds rather improbable but one has

  to go into everything. Not that I want it to be Aunt

  Jennifer--I don't. I would much rather it was Martin

  Dering. I hate the sort of man who presumes on going

  to be a brother-in-law and does things in public that you

  can't smack his face for."

  "Is he that kind?"

  "Very much that kind. He's an ideal person for a

  murderer--always getting telegrams from bookmakers

  and losing money on horses. It's annoying that he's got

  such a good alibi. Mr. Dacres told me about it. A pub-lisher

  and a literary dinner seems so very unbreakable

  and respectable."

  "A literary dinner," said Enderby. "Friday night. Mar-tin

  Dering--let me see--Martin Dering--why, yes--I

  am almost sure of it. Dash it all I am quite sure of it,

  but I can clinch things by wiring to Carruthers."

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  "What are you talking about?" said Emily.

  "Listen. You know I came down to Exhampton on

  Friday evening. Well, there was a bit of information I

  was going to get from a pal of mine, another newspaper

  man, Carruthers his name is. He was coming round to

  see me about half past six if he could--before he went

  on to some literary dinner--he is rather a big bug, Car-ruthers,

  and if he couldn't make it he would send me a

  line to Exhampton. Well, he didn't make it and he did

  send me a line."

  "What has all this got to do with it?" said Emily.

  "Don't be so impatient, I am coming to the point. The

  old chap was rather screwed when he wrote it--done

  himself well at the dinner--after giving me the item I

  wanted, he went on to waste a good bit of juicy descrip-tion

  on me. You know--about the speeches, and what

  asses so and so, a tamous novelist and a amous play-wright,

  were. And he said he had been rottenly placed

  at the dinner. There was an empty seat on one side of

  him where the sex specialist, Martin Dering, ought to

  have been, but he moved up near to a poet, who is very

  well known in Blackheath, and tried to make the best of

  things. Now, do you see the point?"

  "Charles! Darling!" Emily became lyrical with excite-ment.

  "How marvelous. Then the brute wasn't at the

  dinner at all?"

  "Exactly."

  "You are sure you've remembered the name right?"

  "I'm positive. I have torn up the letter, worse luck,

  but I can always wire to Carruthers to make sure. But I

  absolutely know that I'm not mistaken."

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  Murder at Hazelmoor

  "There's the publisher still, of course," said Emily.

  "The one he spent the afternoon with. But I rather think

  it was a publisher who was just going back to America,

  and if so, that looks fishy. I mean it looks as though he

  had selected someone who couldn't be asked without

  rather a lot of trouble."

  "Do you really think we have hit it?" said Charles

  Enderby.

  "Well, it looks like it. I think the best thing to be done

  is--to go straight to that nice Inspector Narracott and

  just tell him these new facts. I mean, we can't tackle an

  American publisher who is on the Mauretania or the

  Berengaria or somewhere. That's a job for the police."

  "My word if this comes off. What a scoop!" said Mr.

  Enderby. "If it does, I should think the Daily Wire couldn't

  offer me less than--"

  Emily broke in ruthlessly into his dreams of advance-ment.

  "But we mustn't lose our heads," she said, "and throw

  everything else to the wind. I must go to Exeter. I don't

  suppose I shall be able to be back here until tomorrow.

  But I've got a job for you."

  "What kind of a job?"

  Emily described her visit to the Willetts and the strange

  sentence she had overheard on leaving.

  "We have got absolutely and positively to find out what

  is going to happen tonight. There's something in the

  wind."

  "What an extraordinary thing!"

  "Wasn't it? But of course it may be a coincidence. Or

  it may not--but you observe that the servants are being

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  cleared out of the way. Something queer is going to

  happen there tonight, and you have to be on the spot to

  see what it is."

  "You mean I have to spend the whole night shivering

  under a bush in the garden?"

  "Well, you don't mind that, do you? Journalists don't

  mind what they do in a good cause."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Never mind who told me, I know it. You will do it,

  won't you?"

  "Oh, rather," said Charles. "I am not going to miss

  anything. If anything queer goes on at Sittaford House

  tonight, I shall be in it."

  Emily then told him about the luggage label.

  "It's odd," said Mr. Enderby. "Australia is where the

  third Pearson is, isn't it?--the youngest one. Not, of

  course, that that means anything, but still it--well, there

  might be a connection."

  "H'm," said Emily. "I think that's all. Have you any-thing

  to report on your side?"

  "Well," said Charles, "I've got an idea."

  "Yes?"

  "The only thing is I don't know how you'll like it."

  "What do you mean--how I'll like it?"

  "You won't fly out over it, will you?"

  "I don't suppose so. I mean I hope I can listen sensibly

  and quietly to anything."

  "Well, the point is," said Charles Enderby eyeing her

  doubtfully, "don't think I mean to be offensive or any-thing

  like that, but do you think that lad of yours is to

  be depended on for the strict truth?"

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  "Do you mean," said Emily, "that he did murder him

  after all? You are q
uite welcome to that view if you like.

  I said to you at the beginning that that was the natural

  view to take, but I said we had to work on the assumption

  that he didn't."

  "I don't mean that," said Enderby. "I am with you in

  assuming that he didn't do the old boy in. What I mean

  is, how far is his own story of what happened true? He

  says that he went there, had a chat with the old fellow,

  and came away leaving him alive and well."

  "Yes."

  "Well, it just occurred to me, you don't think it's pos-sible

  that he went there and actually found the old man

  dead? I mean, he might have got the wind up and been

  scared and not liked to say so."

  Charles had propounded this theory rather dubiously

  but he was relieved to find that Emily showed no signs

  of flying out at him over it. Instead, she frowned and

  creased her brow in thought.